[AGL] off topic

[Michael Eisenstadt]

I just sent this email to an Austin based left-wing maillist. Some of
you, Fontaine, others are already subscribed to this Austin based
left-wing maillist. as our group is already sorta left wing it strokes
my psyche to share it with you.

Read this closely and you will be expert on the Israel thing as it is now,
not as they planned it in the 19th century conspiracy as some would have it
but right here in the now.

I had read Martin van Crewald's latest book. He believes in the new hi-tech
military science which may be true for all I know which is nothing about
military science. I was shocked by his characterizing the IDF in the recent
Israeli-Hisbollah war as a bunch of cowards. As he said, if we have turned
cowardly, end of story. <-my paraphrase

Do read this please and, as i said, if you follow the story you too will
know everything one can from afar.

P.S. for the sake of legibility instead of http://www.xxx.org
recommendations, it would be a good thing when you are impressed by an
article to grab the text of it with Ctl->C and put in your email. Delete any
photos or ads that might be on that page. This ain't rocket science.

Mike Eisenstadt

This is an article in today's Ha'aretz newspaper:

Confirming reports in the Arab media that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert would
be willing to withdraw from the Golan Heights in return for peace, Syrian
President Bashar Assad told the Qatari daily Al-Watan on Thursday that he
had received such a message from the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan regarding the Israeli stance, in exchange for peace with Syria.

It has been known for years, ever since Israel captured the Golan in the Six
Day War, that negotiations with Syria would hinge on the picturesque
highland. But the Golan now is home to moshavim, kibbutzim, wineries and
more than 20,000 Israeli citizens. It is also deemed to be of considerable
strategic importance, and its control is a much-coveted regional asset.
While peace with Syria, in theory, might outweigh or even neutralize the
strategic need for an Israeli presence in the Golan, what exactly would that
peace look like? It could be argued that a shift in the region would cool
the tensions of past months and years in the north.

Israel's demands include Syria's cutting all ties with terrorist groups
including Palestinian organizations headquartered in Damascus. But one
question, which remains to be answered, seems to be the central one: Can
Israel afford to give up the Golan Heights?

"We lived here for years without it," says Prof. Martin van Creveld of the
Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who is Israel's most prominent military
historian. He believes that retaining the Golan is not essential to Israel's
survival.
"Under modern conditions, especially with the technological advances in the
military, topography is less important than it used to be. With the advent
of precision-guided munitions, you no longer need to be 'up there' to hit
them 'down there,'" he says. "Technology has developed in such a way to
favor the defender very much.

"We should always assume, of course, that the IDF is a fighting machine, and
not the cowardly bunch we saw over the summer of 2006," Van Creveld
continues. "If they are, everything is lost anyway."

He goes as far as to say that the IDF would have the advantage from below in
fighting a Syrian army advancing from the Golan Heights.

"If I could think of a good way to commit suicide," he says, "it would be to
command a Syrian tank division down from the Golan Heights."

However, others in the military establishment aren't worried about the
Syrian army attacking.

"It's guerrilla warfare I'm concerned about," says former Military
Intelligence chief Maj.-Gen. (ret.) Aharon Ze'evi Farkash. And he isn't
necessarily referring to guerrillas sponsored by the Assad government.

"There are a lot of issues within Syria that need to be taken into
consideration when discussing this option," Farkash says. "I'm not saying
that I'm for or against [giving up the Golan], but I will say that Syria's
internal politics play a large role."

Farkash believes that because Assad is a member of the minority Alawite
sect, his control of Syria is shaky, as was the case for his father, whom he
succeeded. Islamists within Syria would like to see him overthrown, and
consider him, as an Alawite, unfit to rule.

"In the early 1980s, Hafez Assad led a military campaign against Sunni
militants in Syria, killing tens of thousands of his own people," Farkash
explains. "This situation was never completely resolved, and along with the
global rise of al-Qaida in 2001 and 2002, Wahabism [an extremist form of
Sunni Islam] from Saudi Arabia has been making its way into Syria. Assad
could suddenly lose power to Wahabi extremists or other Sunni factions,
especially if he makes peace with Israel."

With the Alawite-Shi'ite connection becoming closer, as is apparent from
Syria's growing ties with Iran, a predominately Shi'ite nation, Farkash
explains that Assad is considered by the Sunnis to be an infidel, as Sunni
extremists loathe the Shi'ites as heretics and blasphemers.

"How much more so, if Assad were to reach out to Israel for a peace
agreement?" Farkash asks. "He will only make peace if he knows that it
doesn't endanger his control of Syria, and he can wait. After all, it was
his father, not him, that lost the Golan in the first place."

But Van Creveld is less worried about Syria's internal troubles and more
about Israel's external ones. "I know what the future will bring if we don't
have an agreement with Syria," he says. "That is, sooner or later, but
surely, a war. The question is if you prefer the dangers of peace to the
dangers of war. I for one prefer peace."

Furthermore, Van Creveld sees peace negotiations as an opportunity to "hack
off" the Iranian arm in Syria. "After all," he explains, "With the majority
of Syria made up of Sunni Muslims, their relationship with Iran can be
described at best as 'uncomfortable allies.'"

One thing is certain; the issue is a thorny one, with both a military and
political dimension to consider, before even beginning to approach an
Israeli public that won't be eager to give away a geographically strategic
and beautiful spoil of the Six Day War, even if they do desire peace.

"I was always taught growing up here," says Van Creveld, "that peace is
peace, and it's a good thing in itself."